


In Her Light

by TheOriginalCat (ChippedCat)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Ghosts, Original Fiction, Pining, Sort Of, Technology, This has Catradora Vibes, Written for a Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29954667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChippedCat/pseuds/TheOriginalCat
Summary: “Dr. Asimov, with all due respect, I cannot possibly support this project.”“This project is a scientific advancement beyond the likes of anything humanity has ever attempted. I’m changing the world for the better!”“What you have proposed goes against the very laws of nature.”“Nature will only hold us back now! This is the next step, where we bend those laws to our needs instead of abiding by them blindly.”“This is an abomination, Izzy, and I will have no part in it.”“Then show me to someone who will.”
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	In Her Light

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, here's my first original work that I'm posting here. Let's see how this goes.
> 
> This thing was written for nonbinarychaoticstupid's Write This In Your Style Challenge, so be sure to check them out for more works similar to this one. All the other fics are She-Ra fanfictions, so if that's your speed, you're in luck. I always made sure to throw in plenty of She-Ra references in here because I know my audience. The story is a little sad and a little sweet, so be warned.  
> Enjoy!

When Carol died, she took Izzy’s life with her.

It was an accident, a simple one-in-a-million irregularity with her anesthesia that no one could have prevented. That’s what they told Izzy as she sat screaming in the hospital waiting room. Unpredictable. People used to call Carol that. Then nobody would talk about her at all.

Izzy didn’t go to the funeral. She couldn’t bear to be around all those people who barely knew her, all sobbing like their wife had died. Like their light was gone. Fakers, all of them, only there to pretend they cared when they had never bothered while she was alive. Izzy stayed in her bed the entire day, the bed that had been theirs, and cried about how empty it was.

Then she got to work. Her robotics lab had come far, but there were always more steps to take, more new boundaries to cross. She had a particular boundary, a line for some people, that she wanted to go beyond.

“Synthetic humans?” her boss looked down at the proposal and frowned.

“Not just synthetic.” Izzy pitched enthusiastically. “Complete recreations of human beings, down to the last detail. A way to reverse death itself and bring back those unfairly taken.”

“Asimov, I am so sorry about your wife, but this is not the way to go.” Micah sighed. “Maybe instead of something like this, you could try counseling.”

“I’m not crazy, sir, or in need of any help. I’ve been inspired to take the next great leap in modern medicine.” Izzy promised.

“With what, mechanical necromancy?”

“This isn’t zombies or ghouls or whatever magical mumbo jumbo you want to call it. This is real science that could help a lot of people.”

“You want to reanimate the dead.”

“Recreate! A nearly indestructible, replaceable body to take control over death.”

“How would these ‘recreations’ even resemble people’s dead loved ones if we were to make and market this product?”

“We would harness the energy given off by the dead and use it manifest and inhabit the robotic shells.”

“You want to steal people’s souls?” Micah demanded, wide-eyed.

“A soul is such a strange concept. Outdated and frowned upon. We’ll call it decay-energy. Sounds less mystical and New-Age-y.” Izzy corrected.

“Do you even hear yourself, Asimov?” Micah closed the report and looked her in the eye. “This is madness. Harnessing souls and bringing back the dead? You’re acting absurd.”

“Is helping people absurd? Is reversing a crisis absurd? Reuniting loved ones?” Izzy challenged.

“This is something we were not meant to do, Izzy.” Micah stood. “You’re twenty-four. You have so much life left; I promise things will get better. Take a sabbatical. Six months. Go home and rest, and I promise you that in a month, maybe two, this will sound as insane to you as it does to me.”

Izzy didn’t let him dampen her enthusiasm.

* * *

The next people she pitched the idea to, after quitting that dead-end job, of course, denied her. And the next. Then the next. Finally, four months into her unemployment, she found someone who didn’t laugh her out the door in the first minute.

Unfortunately, the head of Bow-and-Arrow Industries wasn’t a dreamer like she was.

“Dr. Asimov, with all due respect, I cannot possibly support this project.” Mr. Quiver sighed, pushing her files back across the table.

“This project is a scientific advancement beyond the likes of anything humanity has ever attempted. I’m changing the world for the better!” Izzy was officially sick of everyone holding her back.

“What you have proposed goes against the very laws of nature.” Quiver insisted.

“Nature will only hold us back now! This is the next step, where we bend those laws to our needs instead of abiding by them blindly.”

“This is an abomination, Izzy, and I will personally take no part in it.”

“Then show me to someone who will.”

He introduced her to Marie, the President of Frightful Robotics. Then the real work began.

A decade of work went into the Life After Project, millions of dollars too, before anything substantial happened. Not to mention the countless cadavers, but Izzy did her best not to think about it. She was doing this for Carol. For all the couples and families who had been torn apart far too soon. If a few folks who donated their bodies to science had their decay-energy stuck in toasters, what was that in the face of the monumental good they were doing. It would all be worth it.

And it was the moment the Angel Division had their first breakthrough.

“A hologram tethered to a rescued soul.” Marie shook her head with a smile, standing in front of the machine as it booted up. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Not a soul.” Izzy corrected lightly. The machine came online and a projected image of a tall woman with bright white hair appeared in front of them, causing Izzy to squint from the bright light emitting from the woman’s image. She stumbled backward, clearly dazed and unsure of what she was doing in a lab.

“Why don’t you tell us your name?” Marie addressed the hologram. The holographic woman opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Izzy frowned.

“Can we get some help with the sound, please?” she called. An older pale man sauntered over and examined the base of the hologram.

“It doesn’t look like any voice samples were input, so there’s not going to be any sound until we can get ahold of those.” He concluded. The holographic woman was full-on panicking now.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Izzy tried to soothe her. “You were dead, but we figured out a way to bring you back. You’re safe, and nothing can hurt you.” she promised.

“Use any recordings we have laying around, Horace; it doesn’t matter.” Marie ordered. The man nodded and hurried around the lab before eventually landing on the computer.

“We’re working on getting you a voice,” Izzy promised the girl. She was starting to calm down a little but was still wide-eyed. “Hang on for just a second.”

“Here we go.” Horace took a drive from the computer and inserted it into the base.

“Now, what’s your name?” Marie repeated. The woman’s heavy breathing was suddenly audible.

“Em- Emerson.” she stammered.

“Congratulations, Emerson, you’re officially the first person to be reanimated in holo-form. You’re a part of history now.” Marie said with a grin.

“I’m what?” the hologram’s expression turned horrified.

“We brought you back to life.” Izzy said.

“Why me?”

“You donated your body to science.”

“This… this is crazy, why am I BACK FROM THE DEAD?” Emerson demanded. “Why would you ever do this?”

“Because we can.” Marie continued smiling.

“And because while you may not appreciate us, other people will. Other people would be happy.” Izzy added.

“No one would want this. I don’t want this!” Emerson cried.

“Fine. Delete her then.” Marie gestured to Horace.

“Wait, what?” Emerson turned to face Horace as he fumbled with the hologram’s base once more. “No, don-” she disappeared in a flash.

“Don’t worry, Izzy.” Marie sighed, patting her partner’s shoulder. “With luck, our next subject with have the decency to be grateful.” She walked off, but Izzy couldn’t stop staring at where Emerson had disappeared.

Some people will always resist where science takes them. But a nagging voice in her head asked if it was up to her to decide where the science went.

* * *

The holograms became a best-seller instantly, which was really all Marie was after. But Izzy didn’t allow herself to get complacent. Her goal was still to create fully-functional robotic vessels for the lost. Still, she let herself enjoy the holograms until she could fulfill her goal.

“Where….. where am I?” the hologram blinked her eyes groggily. Izzy pushed up her safety googles, her eyes watering a little both from the light of the projection and the intense relief she felt seeing her beloved after so long.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.” Izzy promised. Carol sat up and looked at her wife.

“Izzy?”

“Yes! I’m here, and you’re perfectly safe.”

“What am I doing back at the house?” Carol got to her feet. “Why aren’t we in the hospital?”

“Carol, you….” Izzy hesitated. “You died. There was a complication during your surgery.”

“What?!”

“But it’s okay! I brought you back. We can be together again.” Izzy consoled.

“How did you do that? How long have I been dead?” Carol demanded. “You’re so old, Izzy.”

“Technology, obviously. You’ve met me. And as for being old, that’s rude. I’m only forty.”

“Forty? I’ve been dead fifteen years?!” Carol yelped.

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re back now.”

Carol looked down at her flickering hands.

“No, I’m not.” She whispered.

“Yes, you are, and with time, I’ll make you a new body and we can pick up our lives where we left off.” Izzy swore.

“It’s been over a decade; how can you possibly expect us to go back to the way things used to be?”

“Because that’s what I’ve been trying to achieve for so long. Everything will be okay.”

“I don’t know how to feel about this.”

“This is a good thing! You lost so much of your life, Carol. I’m just trying to help you get it back.” Izzy started to tear up. Of all the people, she never expected Carol to resist progress like this.

“I…. I need time to think about this.” Carol sighed, walking away.

“Carol, please,” Izzy called from the couch. “It’s better this way. We’re together now.” Carol stopped.

“Maybe you’re right. But I just don’t know yet.”

* * *

Things didn’t improve on the technological front. But Carol got used to her new form as time went on, and as she grew more and more aware, she began to remember things.

“The afterlife is beautiful, Izzy.” Carol promised, watching All Dogs go to Heaven one day while Izzy worked on a new robotic prototype. “I think it’s different for everyone, but mine was perfect.”

“What was it like?” Izzy asked curiously.

“It’s kind of indescribable, but there was this big posh hotel. Everything was always warm but never uncomfortable. I saw a few other people, but they were all people I knew. Catra and I had our own penthouse.” Carol remembered, smiling at the thought of her and Izzy’s first cat. “In the middle of the room, there was this enormous pool.”

“You hate swimming.” Izzy chuckled.

“That’s the thing, though. In the pool was fish, as many as I could catch. And, of course, the kitchen was as big as our first apartment, so I could make anything wanted with that fish too. I bet we had sushi twice a week and fish cakes every other day.”

“Your perfect afterlife would have fish in it.” Izzy shook her head.

“It wasn’t perfect, you know. I didn’t have you.” Carol’s expression soured. “When I first…. arrived, I missed you so much. I was so torn because I wanted you to live a good life, but I wanted to be with you.”

“Now you get to have both.” Izzy grinned.

“Are you having a good life, though? You work so hard all the time.”

“What is life if not dedicating yourself to improvement?”

“I guess that’s one way to see it.” Carol muttered. “I just wish you would take some time off every once in a while. Enjoy your life. Trust me, it goes faster than you would think.”

“I am enjoying my life. I have you.”

“In a sense.”

Izzy stopped working and looked over at her wife.

“Are…. Are you unhappy here? Still?”

“I don’t know. I love you, and I want to be with you, but I don’t belong here. Every day, I feel that a little more.” Carol sighed. “I think about the other world and how different it was, but how at home I was.”

“We’ll go back there someday. After a long and lovely life together.” Izzy promised, turning back to her project.

“I wonder what Catra is doing right now.” Carol wondered wistfully. “I just went out of the room one day and didn’t come back. Do you think she misses me?”

“She’s a housecat with an endless supply of fish, love. She’ll be fine.” Izzy assured her.

“I miss her.” Carol sighed.

“I do too. Good cats are irreplaceable, even if you get new pets.” Izzy pulled open one of her project’s panels and caught a glimpse of her reflection. She thought she’d have less gray hair at sixty-five. “Hey, maybe once we get the human vessels up and running, we could work on animal ones. Then Catra can come join us in the world of the living.”

“You’re so sure of your work, but have you ever considered what would happen if it…. didn’t pan out?” Carol asked hesitantly. Izzy’s hands froze.

“We just need to have some faith in science.”

“You’re the one that says faith is for those who don’t have trust in truth.”

“Can’t you just believe in me?” Izzy turned to her wife.

“I do believe in you, but I also know that’s it been years and nothing has come along except holograms. I’m still a ghost, Izzy. I don’t wanna live like this forever.” Carol argued.

“You won’t. Any day now I’ll-”

“What, you think the piece you’ve been missing is just going to come to you one day?”

“I think the more I work on this, the more progress I make.”

“It’s been five years since the last breakthrough, and even that was almost nothing.”

“I’m not giving up.”

“I won’t ask you to.” Carol stood and held her arm with one hand. “But I want you to know that I don’t belong here anymore. This isn’t my world.”

“Don’t think like that.”

“I won’t ask you to give up. I want you to give me up.” Carol looked her wife in the eye.

“Ten years.” Izzy swore. “I can crack this in ten years.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Then I’d have no reason for you to stay.”

* * *

“Are you sure about this?” Izzy asked. She walked through the basement with Carol by her side, feeling her age in her step. Carol lit up the room and guided her wife.

“Yes. I think it’s time for me to go again.” Carol assured her.

“I wish you’d stay.” Izzy told her for the hundredth time. Carol smiled sadly and put a nonexistent hand on her wife’s cheek.

“I can’t stay. You’ve always known that.”

Izzy pulled the old hologram base out of the storage locker where she had left it. She had hoped to be younger and happier when she reunited with it. She had hoped that turning Carol off would be temporary. But that isn’t how her story went, and now decades later and trillions down the drain, it was time to let Carol go. The little time she had left couldn’t be spent yearning.

In trying to bring the dead back, she had lost her life. Now, she was reclaiming it in the worst imaginable way.

“I hoped. And I dreamed. And I wanted.” Izzy’s tear fell on the base as she placed it tenderly on a table. Carol walked to the other side of the table to look her in the eye. “But an empire of dreams is no more sustainable than one made of smoke.”

“I will miss you so much, my love.” Carol promised.

“And I you.”

“But my time came decades ago, and this has gone on long enough. I’m ready to go back.”

“Then who am I to keep you?” Izzy powered up the base and pulled up the main screen. Her finger hovered over the ‘delete’ command.

“Farewell, baby. We will meet again.” Carol’s glowing hand took Izzy’s hand from across the table. When Izzy felt nothing, she knew that what she was doing was right. Carol was never really here. She was never going to be. Izzy’s finger descended, and she closed her eyes.

“Goodbye.” And then the room was dark.

**Author's Note:**

> Aw.... so sad. I'm sorry. There was no way this thing could have a happy ending, so I did my best to not make it gut-wrenching.  
> As always, please leave me some love in the comments and let me know what you think of my little short story! If you like She-Ra, all my other work is SPOP fanfics, so give those a look. Hope to see you soon!


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